Mastigouche reserve has hundreds of lakes, many with cottages

It took us two hours to drive back in time 200 years, from the post-industrial traffic gridlock of Montreal to the pre-industrial boreal virginity of the most popular provincial wildlife reserve close the city.

Time is relative, but two hours seems to me to be the outer limit of what can be considered a short hop, in tourism terms.

My 12-year-old son and I left the eastern tip of Montreal island at 6 o'clock on the Friday evening of the recent Victoria Day weekend, and we arrived two hours later at the southeastern Pins Rouges gates (near St. Alexis des Monts) of the Reserve faunique Mastigouche.

"Your cabin is 37 kilometres up that gravel road," said the park warden on duty, pointing to Route 1, the main two-lane unpaved road that runs north-south through the wildlife reserve.

We had reservations in Cabin No. 8 on Lac des Sables, one of 11 cabins on the pristine lake, which in turn is one of 417 lakes inside the Mastigouche reserve.

There are a total of 22 provincial parks and 17 wildlife reserves in Quebec. Oka and Mont Tremblant are the best-known parks, while the best-known reserve is probably La Vérendrye, northwest of Mont Tremblant park. But Mastigouche, in the Mauricie region midway between Mont Tremblant park and the town of Shawinigan, is the most popular in terms of the number of visitors, including fishermen.

Filmmakers like it, too. Mastigouche was the location chosen by British filmmaker Richard Attenborough for filming of his 1999 movie Grey Owl, starring Pierce Bronson. The film tells the story about an Englishman who came to Canada in the early 1900s and connived to reinvent his identity as a Canadian aboriginal. Mastigouche's boreal forests, lakes and undulating Laurentian hills provide a picture-perfect backdrop for the stereotypical European idea of the vast untamed wilds of Canada. Bears, deer, herons, moose, loons and more. If it's an animal whose image appears on Canadian money, you can be sure to find it in Mastigouche.

But my son and I have come for speckled trout. It took us 50 minutes to drive those 37 kilometres from the front gates of the reserve to Lac des Sables. But at least we arrived on time for the nightly 9 o'clock lake lottery.

It's through lottery draws that the next day's fishing rights are determined in Quebec's wildlife reserves. By the stroke of 9, the men and women from the 11 cottages on Lac des Sables had converged at a hut beside the main lakeside cottage where the warden for this sector was lodging.

The warden, Pierrette Lacoursière, was standing at a table holding a registration log. Beside her was another warden, Robert Frappier. He had a little cage in front of him with 11 balls, numbered 1 to 11. The number on each ball corresponds to a cabin number.

At precisely 9:01, Frappier turned the crank on the cage, making it revolve and move the balls around. One by one, the balls spilled out into a special slot. The balls determined the order of selection of lakes for the next day. We had the names of the lakes on a sheet of paper; the farthest was 21 kilometres from Lac des Sables.

Our number came up second-to-last, and on the advice of Lacoursière, we chose Lac de la Baie, 12 kilometres to the west.

I'd never heard frogs as loud as those on the first night in our cabin. It was a one-storey structure with dark-brown exterior of faux-log-cabin siding. Inside were a kitchen, common room, two bedrooms with two single beds each, and a bathroom with shower, sink and flush toilets. The tap water in the kitchen and bathroom came from the lake. The stove, fridge, lights and hot water were powered by propane gas; there is no electricity in the wildlife reserve. Similarly, there are no cellphone towers or ordinary telephone land lines. In the case of an emergency, we were instructed to report to the warden's cottage, which was connected by walkie-talkie radio to the three sentry posts at the edge of the reserve.

The only evidence of the outside world in our cabin was a French-language celebrity-news magazine left last fall by a guest. By now, it was pitch-dark outside. My son was lying on his bed in his sleeping bag reading the magazine when I looked out the window over the lake and up at the sky.

"Let's go out and look at the stars!" I exclaimed.

"I'm already looking at the stars," my son deadpanned, flipping the pages from Mitsou to Caroline Neron.

The next morning at 7, we set out for Lac de la Baie. We took Route 1 south for four kilometres, then a single-lane unpaved road west for another eight kilometres. Eventually we came to the lake and a little clearing where a rowboat was moored. We had brought our own motor with us. (The reserve has boat motors for rent or you can take the rowboat as is.)

Out in the middle of Lac de la Baie, there was no other sign of man - at least not now. I thought this must have been the way Samuel de Champlain experienced Quebec in the early 1600s. The first settlers from France came to what is now the Mastigouche reserve in the late 1700s. By the late 1800s, private fishing and hunting clubs, operating on long-term leases with the Quebec government, were plentiful in the region. One of those, the Mastigouche Club, controlled by Americans, had its own supply of electricity in 1901, the same year that the Montreal Light Heat and Power Company, the precursor to Hydro-Québec, was founded. Most of the private clubs were closed down in the 1960s and 1970s by the provincial government and folded into an expanding new network of public parks and wildlife reserves. But a small community of year-round Quebec residents who have acquired rights lives in the Dickerson sector without electricity, a step removed from the modern world.

While my thoughts out on the lake might have been with Champlain, it didn't take long to realize we were not alone.

It's the wind. One moment, all is quiet; the next moment, the wind picks up; then fades and returns, the cycles repeating themselves, but never in quite the same pattern. It doesn't take long to realize that the wind has its own personality, a spiritual presence that envelopes you. I turned to my left and saw two loons 10 metres from our boat, And there were beavers, too. Proof of their presence was the grey matrix of driftwood branches in the bay to our right. It was about three metres wide and two metres high.

As fate would have it, the fish were biting here. Between us, my son and I caught four speckled trout. The maximum catch allowed is seven fish per person per day. Everyone's catch is weighed and registered at the hut where the nightly lottery is held. Our fish weren't big, just 20 centimetres, or eight inches, long, and weighing a total of 600 grams. But they were typical of the catch in Lac de la Baie. Records show that the average catch on the lake is 4.23 fish per person per day, with the average fish weighing 130 grams, or 41/2 ounces. Not huge fish, true enough. But that's why Lac de la Baie is never a high pick in the draft lottery.

I would have been just as happy fishing off the dock at Lac des Sables, a few steps from our cabin. The beach here was very impressive - a good 500 metres of sandy frontage along the lake. Other cabin guests told us that a person could wander out 100 metres from the shore and never be in water more than 65 centimetres (two feet) deep. Perfect for a family with young children.

Evidently, a lot of families have come to the same conclusion, because Lac des Sables is very popular in summer with those who want to just get away. Forty per cent of those renting cabins in Mastigouche in the summer do so for the swimming and hiking, not fishing or hunting.

Overall, there are 42 chalets on 13 lakes in Mastigouche, as well as 16 "rustic shelters" on another 13 lakes. Camping is allowed on 12 lakes. A rustic shelter is a small cottage with no propane-powered appliances, water taps nor flush toilets. But there are bed frames and an outhouse, as well as a wood stove for heating.

The principal campsite in Mastigouche is just inside the south gates, on spectacular Lac St. Bernard. The lake used to be the private preserve of the St. Bernard Club, an American fishing and hunting club formed in 1872. In the years after Confederation, the shores were alive with American captains of industry and their wives, children and servants.

Today, the old private ways are gone, and the 95 public campsites that line the east side of Lac St. Bernard are valued for their privacy in a dense forest setting. Hiking and biking trails are found nearby. The only restricted area is an island in the middle of lake, which is a heron preserve.

The only store of any kind inside of Mastigouche is a dépanneur on Lac St. Bernard. Leaving the reserve via the southeastern Pins Rouges gates, other trappings of contemporary civilization are quick to reveal themselves. First a bar on your left, barely a few metres outside of the reserve. From there, the two-lane provincial Highway 349 leads to the town of St. Alexis des Monts. The road gets progressively busier and better-paved as you move farther south to Highway 40, on the north side of the St. Lawrence River.

From the Louiseville interchange on Highway 40, it's just a short hour by car back to the eastern tip of Montreal island and the post-industrial urban swirl of the early 21st century.

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